1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a job supporting system that contributes to improving the efficiency of jobs performed in companies and so forth, and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, to improve the efficiency of job processing in companies, technologies called reengineering and concurrent engineering have been proposed. As computer systems that support such technologies and manage resources such as documents, application systems that include software tools such as document managing/sharing tools and work flow tools, have been actively developed. These systems are becoming a key for sharing information using electronic documents and improving the efficiency of work processing in organizations such as companies.
FIG. 1 shows the structure of a conventional job supporting system. In the system shown in FIG. 1, a user of the system inputs a service command for retrieving a document or the like to the system through a user interface 1. The service command is then sent to a service executing module 3 through a control module 2.
The content of the service to be provided to the user has been programmed in the service executing module 3. The service executing module 3 accesses a database management module 4 and executes the requested service. The database management module 4 has stored document information 5 that representing what kind of document formats and documents are in themselves.
When a user inputs a document retrieval command, the service executing module 3 retrieves the document information 5 from the database management module 4 and supplies the retrieved document to the user.
The conventional job supporting systems provide the following service tools:
(1) PCTE (Portable Common Tools Environment)
In PCTE, which that is an international standard of CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering), a document repository mainly defining the relation of documents and tools that use the document repository has been considered.
(2) Groupware Tool
Groupware tools which are recently developed document managing/sharing tools, mainly provide a document sharing function for sharing documents among a plurality of users. For example, Lotus Notes, which is currently the most common groupware tool, is a document database that is fundamentally for electronic mail. In Lotus Notes, document types are defined with templates named forms. A document retrieval function in Lotus Notes is accomplished by sharing the forms with the users.
(3) Work Flow Tool
Work flow tools have been developed in recent years, as a tool for modeling works in organizations. In a work flow tool, the flow of a work is defined. Corresponding to the flow, commands are issued to workers.
However, the conventional job supporting systems have the following drawbacks.
As is known in BPR (Business Process Reengineering), in job proceeding steps, organizations, documents, and work procedures are frequently changed. In addition, as hardware and software technologies are continually advancing, services provided to users are also drastically changing. To deal with such drastic changes, not only the job supporting system, but the program of the service executing module 3 should be changed.
In the conventional database management module 4, only the document information 5 can be registered and referenced. Even if the document information 5 is changed, the contents of the services provided to users are not changed.
In addition, in the PCTE, the relation between the document repository and work definition is not considered. In the groupware tools, likewise, the relation between documents and works cannot be defined. In the groupware tools, although work commands can be issued through electronic mail, relevant programs should be created. On the other hand, in most work flow tools, a function for commanding works in a defined sequence is considered important. Thus, the relation between documents and organizations cannot be defined.
Consequently, in the conventional tools, with the functions that individual tools provide some company activities such as work flow can be supported, and information can be shared. However, all company activities cannot be supported. To deal with changes in supporting services, program codes should be changed. However, actually, such a method is very troublesome and impractical.
As a result, in the conventional job supporting systems, expansibility and flexibility for supporting all company activities are insufficient.